Unique or Weird?
"Autistic people are all 'weird'." You might think this way. Well, in the other hand, they might also consider you "weird." In Mark Haddon's book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time he writes about a story of suspense from an autistic child�s perspective. Besides this, there is a poem called "Autistic Identity" which is written by Dave Spicer, who is actually autistic himself. From these writings, you can know that they aren't "weird." If we try to understand how autistic people think, then we might be able to stop considering them as "weird" and instead as unique.
Autistic citizens live in a completely different world from others; therefore, we should put effort into making them fit in our society. If you, yourself, aren't autistic, you will not know how autistic people feel: "They show me aspects of the world . . . They cannot see the path I follow"(Spicer 4-8). Dave Spicer says that the society doesn�t see where he�s going. Therefore, they should not call them weird. You might not know, but whether they are autistic or not, all humans are the same; autistic people just look at things differently. In Haddon's book, Christopher talks about himself observant compared to others: �I said that I wasn�t clever. I was just noticing how things were, and that wasn't clever. That
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was just being observant (Haddon 25). Christopher can identify different things that normal people can't. Being observant is a very good thing, so they shouldn't be treated as weird. This quote shows that autistic people aren't weird but they are observant and unique.
The poem of Dave Spicer made me think that we shouldn't insult autistic citizens when we don�t know them well. The quote from Mark Haddon�s book showed me that the only difference between them and us was that they are just more observant. I don't think people should consider others weird by their first impressions. When we get to know more about autistic people, we might be able to know that they aren't weird but are unique. As we get friendlier with each other, then the whole society would be more unified and it will get more peaceful.